On the DAMA and CoGeNT Modulations
Abstract
DAMA observes an annual modulation in their event rate, as might be expected from dark matter scatterings, while CoGeNT has reported evidence for a similar modulation. The simplest interpretation of these findings in terms of dark matter-nucleus scatterings is excluded by other direct detection experiments. We consider the robustness of these exclusions with respect to assumptions regarding the scattering and find that isospin-violating inelastic dark matter helps alleviate this tension and allows marginal compatibility between experiments. Isospin-violation can significantly weaken the XENON constraints, while inelasticity enhances the annual modulation fraction of the signal, bringing the CoGeNT and CDMS results into better agreement.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1105.3734,
title = {On the DAMA and CoGeNT Modulations},
author = {Mads T. Frandsen and Felix Kahlhoefer and John March-Russell and Christopher McCabe and Matthew McCullough and Kai Schmidt-Hoberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.3734},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
5 pages, 1 figure. v2 updated refs and CoGeNT data, confidence regions now shown at 95%